The 1901 Census was the first Canadian census to ask questions about language, including mother tongues if still spoken. Thus, the census returns are a valuable tool to locate Irish speakers and to help tell the story of Irish in Canada. To date, there are studies of such respondents in Gagetown, New Brunswick, and St. Gabriel’s Ward in Montréal. As this article demonstrates, however, the answers to the mother tongue question can obscure the true picture of Irish and Irish speakers in Canada. Officially, the returns from Mayo, a village in the western Québec municipality of St. Malachie (St. Malachy, in English-language sources), suggest that there were few Irish speakers there in 1901. Yet, other information and evidence show the presence of Irish speakers, some Irish-born and others born in Québec. Indeed, Mayo had its own ‘Gaelic League’ between 1903 and 1905, whereby this small rural community was linked to the global movement for the revival of Irish.
This article explores aspects of the story of Mayo’s Irish speakers. It outlines the origins of the settlement and evidence about the historical presence of the Irish language in the area and identifies Mayo’s community leaders in 1901. After discussing the language questions in the 1901 census, including challenges that arose from the census framers’ preconceived views about people and language, the article examines the responses in Mayo to the question on mother tongues. Drawing on evidence regarding contemporary French-Canadian fears about the rationale for census questions, as well as established concern about under-reporting of Irish speakers in the 1851 Census of Ireland, the article suggests that individuals in Mayo chose to conceal their knowledge of Irish rather than provide information to government, information that the community feared might be used to disadvantage them. In contrast, the decision to establish the Mayo Gaelic League two years after the 1901 census highlights a community that was proud of the Irish language and of its Irish speakers. Based on this case-study of Mayo, Québec, this article concludes that the 1901 Census of Canada underreported the number of Irish speakers in the country and that, henceforth, evidence from the relevant census returns needs be closely scrutinized.
